Colombo accelerates Sinhalicisation of Madu

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 May 2010, 12:57 GMT]Colombo has launched a large scale Sinhala colonisation at Madu Road Junction, located on Mannaar-Madawachchi Road, which branches off the main route to Madu shrine, situated in the middle of traditional Tamil area, by officially claiming to "resettle" 80 Sinhalese families after renovating a Buddhist temple into a large Vihara at the junction. Categorising the Sinhalese settlers as "Internally Displaced Persons," the Sri Lankan Defence Ministry officials said the Sinhalese "IDPs" had met Resettlement Minister Milroy Fernando and G.A. Chandrasri, the former SLA commander of Jaffna, who is serving as the Northern Province Governor, with the Chief Incumbent Buddhist Monk of the Vihara. Caritas, a Catholic agency for justice, peace and development has been pressurised to construct the houses for the Sinhalese settlers.

Madu is the famous pilgrim centre of Tamil Catholics, where even the Sinhalese Catholics of the western coast, who were Tamils a century ago, flock in for festivals. It is the symbol of Tamil Catholicism in the island of Sri Lanka and is already a declared forest sanctuary.

The colonisation scheme was begun in 1970s with a hidden motive of transforming the area into a full-fledged Sinhala colony, by using the lands of a cashew farm between the Madu Shrine and the junction.

However, the "settlement" was later abandoned, fearing repercussions following large-scale massacre and arson committed by the Sri Lanka Army in December 1984 after a landmine blast.

The geographical contiguity of Tamil Catholics along the western coast of Sri Lanka from Mannaar to Colombo has been already Sinhalacised in the Chilaapam (Chilaw) - Colombo sector through carefully planned social engineering, an act of cultural and demographic genocide similar to de-linking the contiguity of the Northern and Eastern provinces along the eastern coast.

Ko’ndachchi-Chilaavaththu’rai, Thalaimannaar Pier and Madu in Mannaar district are being particularly targeted for Sinhala-Buddhist colonies by Colombo's Defence and Resettlement ministries.